When I first started therapy, I was expecting fast results, believing that this was something I could just do for a while until I got back on the right track and then walk away from it. What I didn't expect to learn was that this was going to take a while, be hard work, and I would eventually realize that I was on no "right track" to begin with, or that 5 months later, I still wouldn't exactly know what the right track looks like.
There have been many weeks where I walk out to my car, seemingly unchanged, and I think, "That wasn't too exciting. Maybe I should start coming only every 2 weeks?" And then there are those weeks. Those weeks when I have wadded Kleenex in both hands and I float out to my car on some cloud of freedom. This was one of those weeks.
Remember back when I explained about taking the hormone test and beginning supplements? Did I mention somewhere in here that I had melanoma a few years back? Well because of those two things, last week I found myself standing in the nude getting a nooks-and-crannies-check by a resident looking for freak moles, and as she was lifting my arms and looking in my armpits, she began causally talking to me about the laundry list of supplements that were listed on my chart. She mentioned her time spent studying at an endocrinology clinic and some condition where women can produce low cortisol after having a baby, due a disorder in the pituitary, caused by...(brain stopped listening) My head started swimming. A few minutes later she can back from the computer in the corner of the exam room with a slip of paper informing me of my appointment with the endocrinologist next week.
I don't do well with health issues. Long story short, I have some amount of hypochondria and that little piece of paper in my hand, just made me feel immediately doomed.
I was STRUGGLING through the week waiting for that appointment. My body was flipping out and being dizzy and wonky and genuinely stupid. My mind was caught in a circular trap. And I was not in a good place.
By Thursday, sweet, blessed, Thursday (therapy day), my mind was an eff-ing disaster. I sat across from my therapist, heart-pounding in my chest trying to figure out how to begin this conversation. Within about 5 minutes I erupted into a mess about how I feel the Grim Reaper knocking whenever I have health issues. And she made me face it. I had been circling around the fear that there was something terribly wrong with me. But at the same time I was obsessing over the thought of "I shouldn't be thinking this. Brain shut up. This is stupid., etc" All of this was compounding into a week of intense anxiety and depression.
"What is the worst thing that could happen?" She asked me. And she made me say it. She made me say that the worst thing would be to go in to that appointment and a find out I have some fatal disease. Saying it gave me freedom. It was there the whole time, but I kept trying to squash it. Extinguish it and make it go away. But at the same time, I never fully acknowledged it. It was like a shadow that I knew was there, but was too scared to turn around and look at. And while my brain knew that that shadow would just be my familiar shape on the ground, some sneaky back corner of the brain was throwing out suggestions like, "Ooh, maybe it's a murderer!" So, to let my brain think that worst-case-scenario-thought (look at the shadow) and stop trying to run from it was the first step.
"Ok, so they tell you that. Now what do you do?" She asked. I begin to tell of all the things I would do. She looked at me, tortise-shell glasses perched on the end of her nose and nodded. She was right. If I found out some end-all news, I would live my life. Because that is what you do in that situation. This was the second step.
"So when you have these thoughts, what do you do next time?" was her final question. Together, we made a list of things to do next time (a la cognitive behavioral therapy) which included things like: let myself think it, write every single stupid circular thought down for ten minutes, stop saying "should" to myself. Step three.
I wish I could say it more eloquently, but that is proving to be very difficult. What I am trying to say is: my brain is wired for worry. Ask any woman in my family and they will agree, we are biologically and conditionally prone to this kind of thinking. My previous patterns of thinking provided me with dead ends and lost routes that expended much of my time and energy. Now, I can actually feel my brain start working in a new way. I am learning how to think through things in new ways and learning how to stop fighting myself.
That 45 minutes changed my life. For how long, you may ask?
P.S. I had the endocrinology appointment, took some tests and got a prescription. More cortisol this time, but not the supplemental form I had been taking. Some real drugs with safety lid. There was never great cause for concern, but I couldn't convince myself of that on my own.
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